Nat Lawson

Created by John McFetridge

And Toronto author (and Montreal ex-pat) McFetridge delivers just enough with the short story “Barbotte” to get me all hot and bothered.

It’s 1946, and NAT LAWSON is just back from the war, biding his time, working for Ma Bell and stringing phone lines for local bookies on the side, feeling a little numb, trying to figure out his place in a world that seems a little dull after “five years in the North Atlantic.”

Fortunately, Montreal’s still a wide-open city, full of jazz clubs, barbotte joints, gambling dives, blind pigs, taverns and assorted other venues of vice, and that suits Nat fine. He could use a little excitement.

So when Leah, the sister of Nat’s pal Sid Aidelbaum, a local bookie, asks him to play private eye, he jumps at the chance. Especially after it looks like someone’s playing Nat for a patsy.

There’s some great local colour, and the period detail is spot-on (Jackie Robinson’s imminent breaking of the colour barrier, playing for the Montreal Royals, is a major part of the plot). But it’s just a snippet of a story, barely an appetizer. I’d love to see Nat do a little more.

John?

One of Canada’s best crime authors and a fellow refugee from the ‘Park, McFetridge is the author of the thrillers Let It Ride, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Dirty Sweet, all set in Toronto, and the acclaimed Eddie Doherrty series, featuring the growing pains of a young, ambitious Montreal cop in the late sixties and seventies.